


On Regret

by Stealth_Noodle



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Bittersweet, Comment Fic, F/M, Final Fantasy Kiss Battle, Late Night Conversations, Mid-Canon, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-29 00:49:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stealth_Noodle/pseuds/Stealth_Noodle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terra can't fit regret into her worldview; Shadow can't view the world without it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Regret

They've never spoken much, nor had anything like a conversation since that night on the way to Thamasa. But as Terra paces the moonlit deck of the airship, trying to wear down her nerves, one of the shadows calls her name.

He's different now, since the world ended; she couldn't put words to the change, but she'd be genuinely surprised now if he stole away in the night. She's different, too, in ways she'd be just as hard-pressed to describe. Emotion is a sea she's still learning to swim, and she's far from learning the names of her strokes.

When she approaches, he asks, "What do you regret?"

She's quiet for a while, thinking. The wind is cold when she isn't moving; she shifts into her esper skin and is glad when he doesn't recoil. He doesn't prompt, doesn't fidget, doesn't do anything at all but watch her.

"I'm not sure I understand regret," she says at length. "If your choices make you who you are, then if you erased your choices, you'd lose yourself. You'd be like..." She falters but presses on. "You'd be like I was."

"You don't understand regret," he agrees, bluntly but without rancor. "There are worse ways to be than how you were." 

Of all the ways she has been—growing up under lock and key in a laboratory, enslaved and made a weapon, torn apart by her own fear—none was worse than being empty. "I can't think of any," she replies. "What do you regret?"

Now he is quiet, for so long that she wonders if she violated some social rule that she still doesn't understand. In the darkness, all she can see of him is the gleam of the moon on his eyes. 

Eventually the gleam shifts as if he's inclining his head. "I asked first."

"And I answered." She focuses on her claws to gather her thoughts. "Should I regret being raised as a weapon? Should I regret my own heritage, if it means I might disappear?"

"You can't regret something done to you. Tell me something that you've chosen."

Her hand moves automatically to her throat, where her claws clink against the chain of her pendant. She thinks aloud through her reaction: "I opened the gate. I didn't know that the espers would burn Vector, or that the Empire would slaughter the espers, or that Kefka would destroy the world. But those weren't my choices."

"But opening the gate was."

"Yes. If I hadn't, maybe the world wouldn't have been torn apart. Or maybe it would have been worse, with no hope left at all." She holds the pendant in her palm, feels the echo of her father's pulse. She raises her chin. "I could wonder forever, but it doesn't matter. All I know for certain is that I'm nothing without my choices."

In the silence, the wind grows loud. The world below is silvered and broken.

She moves closer to him to share his shelter and asks, "What do you regret?"

The light on his eyes disappears. "A year ago, everything. Now, almost everything."

Asking would be prying, but he pried first. "Relm?"

He stiffens with a sharp intake of breath. This is as good as anyone else's full-body startle.

When he makes no other reply, she adds, "I watch everyone. She's precious to you."

"Don't tell her." There's something fragile underneath the gruffness of his tone, something old and tired. His eyes shine dimly.

"I won't. Will you?"

For a moment she's worried that she pushed too far, that he's going to retreat into the dark without another word. Instead he replies, "All I'm good for is killing. All I can do for her is kill the source of the world's ruin."

"And you won't regret that."

"No," he agrees, voice almost soft. "Twice in my life, I won't have made the world worse."

Terra hesitates at the edge of her comfort zone, but what is the point of hesitation if she might fade to nothing tomorrow? Letting go of gravity, she drifts a few inches above the deck and presses her lips to what little of his cheek is exposed.

"Three times," she says, half-challenging.


End file.
